


The Real Thing

by ameliacareful



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Jensen functions as kind of an outsider point of view, Sometime in season 11, Swearing, brief Jared Padalecki, very graphic hunting violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-09
Updated: 2016-02-13
Packaged: 2018-05-19 07:15:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5958444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ameliacareful/pseuds/ameliacareful
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jensen Ackles woke up in a cheap motel in Dean Winchester's place.  When Sam Winchester realized who he was, it dawned on Jensen that he was a case.  Sam wanted to figure out what happened and get Dean back.  Sam wanted to get Dean back and he, Jensen Ackles, was an obstacle and so was his whole reality and Sam would not really care.  Sam Winchester would raise the Darkness and burn the universe down to get Dean back.</p>
<p>The Winchesters were real.  And by any normal standards they were bugf**k crazy.</p>
<p>(This was started before Castiel said yes to Lucifer, so slight AU.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

            Jensen Ackles woke thinking the sheets smelled weird. The room smelled a little like cigarette smoke. He had a moment of disorientation trying to figure out where he was. Vancouver? LA? Fuck a duck wasn’t he supposed to be on set? Con?

            Hotel? He was in…where the hell was he? A cheap motel room from the looks of it. Beige paint and carpet. Dirt. Like a ‘by the hour’ motel room. Cringe worthy. It was a double and the sheets were messed up in the other bed. A couple of duffel bags, a laptop; it looked like a set from the show except there were four walls and no crew.

            There was someone fumbling at the lock and then Jared opened the door, dressed for shoot and holding two coffees. No hat, plaid shirt, canvas coat.

            “Are we late?” Jensen asked.

            Jared stopped, frowned. “You feeling okay?” he asked.

            “No. What are we doing here?”

            “Nothing this morning,” Jared said. “You hit your head or something?” He handed him a cup of coffee.

            Jensen sipped. It was black. “Fuck, did you bring cream and sugar?”

            He had no idea what happened next. It wasn’t that he and Jared had never wrestled but not like this and not without a lot of joking around ahead of time. He was on the bed and then he was on the floor between the bed and the wall and Jared was on top of him, teeth bared and Jensen’s forearm was burning.

            Jared hissed, “What are you!” His face was inches away, teeth bared and he was scary.

            “Jared! It’s me, Jensen! What the hell, dude!”

            There wasn’t much room between the bed and the wall for two big guys but somehow Jared grabbed him and hauled him to his feet and dropped him on the bed. Jensen realized he had hot coffee all over himself. “ _Jensen_? Talk to me, _Jensen_ ,” Jared said and he wasn’t acting like himself. He was acting like Sam. Was this some sort of prank? It didn’t feel like a prank. Pranks were fun. Embarrassing. Humiliating. But fun.

            “What the hell are you doing?” Jensen asked. “Where is this place?” He was supposed to be at home. They were going to the farmer’s market today and taking JJ which Danneel said was a horrible idea but Jensen wanted to do because Friday he was flying to a convention in…some city. “Jared—”

            “I’m not ‘Jared’,” Jared said.

            Whoa. He’d seen Jared depressed and he’d seen Jared in the middle of an anxiety attack but this was… he’d never… was Jared psychotic? “Hey,” Jensen said. “It’s okay, man. Let’s just calm down. We’ll call Gen and get things all straightened out.”

            “Wait,” Jared said, eyes narrowing. “Jared and Jensen, the actors? With the weird last names?” He rubbed his face with his hand and Jensen noticed for the first time that his knuckles were scarred. Jared’s knuckles were…not like that. And Jensen’s fingernails weren’t perfect the way they were kept during the season but this guy was missing the tip of his pinky finger.

            What had Jared done? What kind of, how could someone pull that off?

            “You’re the guy who plays Dean in that television show about our lives,” Sam Winchester said.

#

            “You’re doing a salt and burn,” Jensen said.

            “Yeah,” the guy who wasn’t Jared said. “In Cartersville, Virginia.”

            Jensen had never heard of it but then he’d never heard of half the locations where stories took place. They were both eating omelets. Jensen had a side of fruit. The guy who wasn’t Jared had a side of ham. He didn’t eat like Jared. “Does Dean really eat a ton?” Jensen asked.

            Eyes narrowed. “Dean can eat, yeah. How do you know that?”

            “It’s in the scripts,” he explained. “If I were ordering as Dean I’d have ordered a big breakfast with a lot of bacon.”

            “I take it you don’t eat that way.”

            “I’d be a blimp. Jared does. Jared eats like a horse. If he doesn’t eat and work out, he can’t keep muscle mass on.” It was weird to be a diner. It was really weird to be in a diner like this and not have someone come up and ask if they could have a photograph with the two of them. It felt crazy to be asking this guy questions as if Dean was real.

            The waitress refilled their coffees and Sam—he had to stop thinking of him as the guy who wasn’t Jared and start thinking of him as Sam—watched fascinated as he dumped half and half and sugar into his cup. Sam, he noticed, drank his black. “We thought you liked lattes.”

            “Not first thing in the morning,” Sam said. He looked at Jensen for a long moment. “This is a fucking freak show.”

            Jensen kept catching himself staring at the guy. Jared had great hair naturally as did Sam. Sam’s was a little longer and less layered but then again he didn’t have people whose job was to maintain it. In sunlight it had a lot of gray in it where Jared’s was highlighted (artfully so to not look highlighted, of course.) Jensen didn’t have the nerve to ask if Dean was going gray as well.

            “What do you remember?” Sam asked.

            About how different Jared was than Sam? “About the show?”

            Sam didn’t hide his impatience, “Your last memories before you woke up. Anything unusual? Anybody wish anything?”

            He was a case. Sam wanted to figure out what happened and get Dean back. Oh Jesus fucking Christ. Sam wanted to get Dean back and he, Jensen Ackles, was an obstacle and so was his whole reality and Sam would not really care. Sam Winchester would raise the Darkness and burn the universe down to get Dean back.

            The Winchesters were real. And they were bugfuck crazy.

#

            Sam decided after awhile that there was nothing about the hotel room or the town that gave them a lead on what had happened to Dean. He went out to the parking lot and called someone. Castiel, Jensen suspected. He was calling an angel. Jensen had Dean’s phone so he checked the contacts. Most of them he didn’t recognize but ‘Cas’ was one of the ones he did. Jensen sat on the edge of the unmade bed.

Was Dean Winchester with Danneel and JJ? He hoped not. He didn’t want that crazy motherfucker anywhere near his family.

They packed, or rather Sam packed both his and Dean’s duffel (after handing Jensen clean clothes. Dean Winchester’s clean clothes. A Henley and a plain blue flannel shirt.) Then they got in the ’67 Chevy Impala and headed for Virginia.

            “It’s weird,” Jensen said. “I feel like I know you and I don’t know you at all. I don’t know how much of the show is accurate. And some stuff isn’t on the show.”

Sam was driving. It was mostly like the show; there was a cassette player but also an iPhone cradle. Jensen didn’t ask.

            “What are the highlights?” Sam asked.

            “Dean shows up at Stanford to tell you that your dad is missing,” Jensen said. Sam nodded. “You guys find Missouri. Meg shows up. The Impala gets plowed by a demon-possessed semi-truck driver. Your dad makes a deal to save Dean.”

Jensen walked through the first three seasons and Sam finally stopped him with, “Yeah. That all sounds like you’re pretty spot on.”

            There was an uncomfortable silence. Jensen had a thousand questions he wanted to ask about Dean—what was Purgatory really like and what was Dean like when he got back, did he really sit on the floor a lot? Did Dean really only sleep four to six hours a night? How much _did_ he drink? Had they really gone back in time?

            “So,” Sam said, “You and this Jared guy don’t get along.” They were heading for the Bunker.

            “We get along great,” Jensen said. “I was in his wedding.” He wondered where Sam got the idea—oh, ‘The French Mistake’. “That was a joke written into that episode or, I guess, in that alternate reality?”

            “Is Jared married to the woman who played Ruby?”

            “Yeah. Gen. She’s great. They’re great. She’s not like in the episode at all, no save the otters craziness, no alpacas in the back yard. They live in Austin and they’ve got two boys, Thomas and Shep.”

            “Are you married?”

            “Yeah. My wife’s name is Danneel. She’s an actor. I’ve got a daughter a little older than their youngest. JJ.”

            Sam smiled. “JJ.”

            “Yeah.”

            “Dean would be pretty much helpless if he had a daughter,” Sam said. “She’d have him wound around her little finger.”

            “We have that in common,” Jensen said dryly. “I don’t get to see her much. We shoot nine months of the year in Vancouver.”

            “Why Vancouver?”

            “It’s cheaper.” Jensen explained Canadian tax breaks and LA union rules and studio costs, how much it cost per show ($2.2 million.) He talked about directing. Sam was smart and curious and asked good questions. Of course, he’d gotten into Stanford despite the moving around. He was really interested in directing.

            “You direct other stuff?”

            “Just episodes of Supernatural. I hope to do more stuff when the series ends.”

            When the series ends. He and Jared had kicked around ideas for how the series should end. A lot of them involved the brothers dying. He felt like he had just said, ‘I hope to do more directing when you’re dead.’

            They had to stop for gas around four hours later. Sam sent him in to pay and get coffee and snacks (yeah, Dean really did carry most of the money and credit cards) and Jensen realized that they’d been driving for over four hours and Sam had kept him talking about himself the entire time. He’d loosened up and started feeling pretty comfortable with everything. Which was one of the things Sam did in the show. Gave people the talk. Made them feel comfortable. Never let them into his life. He got out of the car and walked in. He kept expecting…and then it dawned on him, no one was going to recognize the car, or him, or Sam.

            No fans. Nobody to recognize them from the show. No show. Just Sam who never talked about himself and had barely any friends except Jody Mills.

            He climbed back into the car and handed Sam a coffee. “You know I’m not Dean, I don’t mind if you talk about shit.”

            “Whaddaya mean?” Sam asked. He sipped the coffee and made a bit of a face. Sipped again. Looking over he shrugged. “Gas station coffee. Always tastes like gas station coffee, you know?”

            “I mean that I’m a person who knows about the stuff you do and knows something about your life. I don’t mind actually talking. Unlike Dean, who’d rather have his teeth pulled without Novocain than talk about shit.”

            Sam frowned at him a minute.

            “Did you guys end up at a girl’s school dealing with Calliope?”

            Sam’s eyes widened.

            “We did a show on it,” Jensen said. “I wasn’t sure if you guys actually—I guess you did. Well, you know the Boy Melodrama scenes. Those are kind of the heart of the show. Sam and Dean drive around the country in the Impala, ganking monsters and having arguments.”

            Someone honked and Sam jerked. He glanced in the rear view mirror at the guy waiting for him to clear the pump. He pulled the Impala out of the gas station.

            “Anyway, Dean, at least the Dean in our story, is, well, kind of old school. Not big on sentiment.”

            “Do you call it ‘Destiel?” Sam asked.

            “Ah…yeah. That’s what the fans call it,” Jensen said. “And it’s Sastiel. Not Samstiel.”

            Sam nodded, clearly not appalled. “How come that wasn’t in the play?”

            “Destiel is a lot more popular. Way more popular even than Wincest anymore. And you’re changing the subject. I just wanted to say you’ve…you know, been through shit that you don’t ever get to talk about because no one would understand or believe you. And, I won’t exactly understand it, you know. I mean, I’ve never been to Hell, thank God, but I know you were in the Cage and the Trials and, seriously man, I think you’re a fucking hero.”

            “Uh, thanks,” Sam said.

            The silence stretched, awkward.

            Jared would have known what to say or do. Jared was the talker. “So, where do you get your shirts?” Jensen asked.

            “Army surplus and EBay. I used to get ‘em at thrift stores,” Sam said. “Then thrift stores got trendy. It was hard to find stuff in my size before, now it’s impossible.”

            “Did you ever have a purple shirt with a greyhound on it?”

            “Shit, really? I loved that shirt. That shirt was in your show?”

            “Yeah, and Dean’s Led Zep t-shirts.”

            Sam shook his head.

            “Do you use a Taurus 9mm?”

            “Yeah,” Sam said. “Yeah, and Dean uses the Beretta or the Colt 45.”

            “Did he ever use a Desert Eagle?”

            Sam rolled his eyes. “Piece of shit. That was Dean’s Matrix phase. Agent Smith carries one in the first movie. Do you shoot?”

            Jensen shrugged. “I learned, you know, so I wouldn’t look like an idiot. I prefer golf. Or scuba diving.”

            “Seriously? I’d love to scuba dive. Where do you dive?”

            He let Sam get him off the subject of the brothers.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jensen said, “You know Chuck Shurley is God.”
> 
> “He’s a prophet,” Sam said and kept on getting up.
> 
> “No,” Jensen said. His hands hurt so bad from blisters he would do anything not to dig for a few more minutes. “You know that high school musical? The one that the muse was haunting?”
> 
> “Yeah?” Sam was hard to see, standing above him in the dark.
> 
> “Marie sent a ticket to the publisher of the Supernatural books. Chuck showed up. If he was a prophet and he was still alive, then Kevin couldn’t be a prophet, too.”
> 
> Sam stood there. Jensen couldn’t see his face.
> 
> “Besides,” Jensen added, “It’s in the show.”
> 
> Then Sam started laughing. He laughed a bit and then asked, “You mean that little alcoholic douch—” but then he started laughing again and this time he didn’t seem to be able to get a hold of himself. He sat back down next to Jensen. It didn’t sound like a good kind of laughing.

*  *  *

            Jensen wasn’t sure how anybody slept in the Impala. According to the show, Sam napped all the time in the passenger seat and Jensen had sort of fallen asleep while Sam was driving but he couldn’t say he felt exactly rested. He’d dozed, drifted, woken, dozed, drifted, woken, and now his neck ached and he felt worse. It was not the state he wanted to be in while standing in a cemetery in the dark.

            “We’re going to just stand here and listen and get a sense of the place,” Sam said.

            It wasn’t like he’d never been in a cemetery. They shot in them. Most of the time they mocked one up because cemeteries didn’t really want you digging there and because a lot of cemeteries had those flat plaques—like this one—rather than fancy headstones. Fancy headstones looked good on television. Flat plaques set in the ground did not. But when he, Jensen, was in a cemetery as Dean, there was a crew and lights and craft services and the sound of a generator. Jared pranking Misha. Something.

            “Cemeteries are really nice places, once you get used to them,” Sam said quietly. “A place like this is a garden. It’s maintained better than a lot of people’s yards. It’s beautiful. My dad started bringing me when I was a kid and just getting me used to being in the dark in one.”

            “That’s what you’re doing now,” Jensen said.

            “Yeah,” Sam said.

            Okay, he thought. Just stand there. Listen. Insects. Virginia wasn’t like Texas. East Texas was green (the next states over were Texas and Arkansas) but Virginia was full of the kind of trees and bushes that looked like they came out of Shakespeare. He could hear distant traffic.

            “I’m going to walk away,” Sam said. “I’ll be out of sight for about ten minutes but I won’t be far. This is just acclimating.”

            “Okay,” Jensen said.

            Sam disappeared into the dark.

            Dean wouldn’t be creeped. Hell, Dean had been doing this all his life. Which, until a day or so ago had been purely fictional.

_Even standing here it feels like an acting exercise or something. Like a game he’s playing. Like the guy out of sight is really Jared and if he wanted to he could quit pretending it was Sam Winchester and get back in the Impala and they’d call cut or something. Then he and Jared would go out and get a drink and talk about how freaky it all was._

            _They’re out here in the middle of the night to kill a ghost. A ghost may toss him around. He could be firing salt filled shotgun shells at a ghost. How long does it really take to dig up a grave with a shovel? If they really have to dig a grave on location they do it the way the pros do, with a back hoe because Jensen is pretty sure it takes a lot longer to dig up a grave in real life than it seems like on the show. He’s put in a deck and dug post holes for a fence and neither one of those was fun._

_A ghost. A simple salt and burn. He doesn’t know if he can do this. Daneel is the one who gets creeped out by scary shit. He doesn’t even believe in ghosts. Demons. Sam Winchester is, according to Dean, a magnet for trouble. Demons could show up and Jensen knows how to fire a gun because he’s gone out to a gun range and he’s done some martial arts training so he won’t look like a moron during a fight scene (God, Misha’s first fucking fight scene was embarrassing) and he’s been in a bar fight (Jared got his wrist broken but they seriously kicked ass) but nothing has ever tried to kill him._

_Right now he’s not even armed. He can hear sounds but he can’t tell what they mean. He could get his face smashed in. He could die and what about Daneel and JJ? Oh fuck, do demons even make sounds? They just, like, teleport in the show but things are a little different in the show. He would smell sulfur if there was a demon around._

_He would give anything to see his little girl right now. To go check on her, make sure she’s asleep. She does that little kid thing of falling asleep so hard it’s like she’s in a coma._

_He jumps like a mile high._

            “Easy,” Sam said.

            “Sorry, I was thinking about—” he realized he didn’t want to say what he was thinking about. Like saying something about JJ would put her in some weird sort of danger.

            Sam handed him a pair of workman’s gloves and walked off.

            Jensen thought about going back to the Impala. Really thought about it. He didn’t want to seem like a wuss. Was it worth dying for?

            Evidently it was because he followed after Sam.

            A simple salt and burn, he told himself. When was anything ever simple?

            They dug for hours. Sam was a machine. Without looking up he’d say, “Take a break,” and Jensen felt like an asshole for doing it but goddamn, after the first hour, everything hurt. Once in awhile Sam would also take a break. After three hours, Jensen just wanted it to be done and they were only a little over halfway. Sam called for a break and followed to sit in the grass and drink some water.

            When Jensen sensed that Sam was about to get up again he said, “You know Chuck Shurley is God.”

            “He’s a prophet,” Sam said and kept on getting up.

            “No,” Jensen said. His hands hurt so bad from blisters he would do anything not to dig for a few more minutes. “You know that high school musical? The one that the muse was haunting?”

            “Yeah?” Sam was hard to see, standing above him in the dark.

            “Marie sent a ticket to the publisher of the _Supernatural_ books. Chuck showed up. If he was a prophet and he was still alive, then Kevin couldn’t be a prophet, too.”

            Sam stood there. Jensen couldn’t see his face.

            “Besides,” Jensen added, “It’s in the show.”

            In the long moment of silence, Jensen felt his hands throbbing.

            Then Sam started laughing. He laughed a bit and then asked, “You mean that little alcoholic douch—” but then he started laughing again and this time he didn’t seem to be able to get ahold of himself. He sat back down next to Jensen. It didn’t sound like a good kind of laughing. Jensen could tell he was trying to get control. He wondered if maybe he should pat the big guy on the back but really, he didn’t feel comfortable touching Sam. Touching Jared was no biggie. Jared touched everybody. Hugs. Picked people up. But Sam had this kind of ‘I could go off like an anti-personnel device’ force field thing going on.

            Finally he had to say, “Are you okay?”

            Sam waved his hand in a loose kind of ‘no problem’ way and wiped his eyes. “Fuck,” he said.

            Then he got up and picked up a shovel and jumped back into the grave still chuckling and started digging. Jensen started to haul himself to his feet to dig some more.

            “Nah,” Sam said, “sit. Your gloves are probably full of blood from broken blisters. You’re not going to be much good much longer anyway.”

            Dean would have jumped in the grave anyway. Hell, Dean had probably dug graves with broken limbs.

            Jensen sat back down and drank some more water.

            “Did Chuck ever explain why he’s hiding?” Sam said, tossing out a shovel full of dirt.

            “No. He never explained anything. I’m not even sure he always knew he was God.”

            Sam didn’t seem to find that surprising. He just kept digging. It was almost five in the morning when Sam was ready to break the coffin lid. Jensen didn’t realize that coffins were usually sealed in a concrete burial vault. Sam had gone at that sucker with a pick ax, cracked it, and then used a wedge and a sledge hammer to split it open from end to end. That wasn’t in the show.

            Too bad, the fans would probably love seeing Jared or him swing a sledge hammer.

            Sam had had Jensen standing guard from the moment he hit the vault, shot gun in hand but nothing had happened. Jensen was so tired he was about to pass out on his feet.

            “Head’s up,” Sam said. “I’m gonna split the box.”

            Jensen didn’t quite know what that meant until he heard splintering and holy fuck, smelled decay. Then he felt it get cold but unlike in the show it was dark as anything and he didn’t see a ghost at all. He heard it, a weird shriek, and then something pushed him in the chest.

            Being thrown in a stunt was nicer than being thrown in real life, but in real life he didn’t fly through the air, he just got punched down. Luckily, he squeezed the trigger on the shotgun and apparently dissipated the ghost because Sam said, “Good job,” as he hauled himself out of the grave.

            Sam grabbed his own shot gun and said, “Salt it!”

            Jensen couldn’t catch his breath but he made himself grab the salt and pour it on the corpse. He couldn’t see the corpse. They had a little camping lantern but since there was no crew to arrange the lighting, it didn’t illuminate the grave very well.

            Sam fired his shotgun. So fucking loud. Everybody had to have heard it for miles. “Douse it in acetone,” Sam said.

            Jensen picked up the bottle. It looked like an ammonia bottle but the label was worn off so they’d used it over and over. “Acetone?” he said.

            “Yeah. Now would be a good time.”

            Smelled like fingernail polish remover. He spread it over the corpse as best he could.

            Sam fired the shot gun a second time, tossed it, and picked up Jensen’s. He held it in one gloved hand while he fished in a pocket with the other. He pulled out a book of matches, lit them all and dropped them. The acetone lit hard and fast and Jensen heard something, a shriek, but so high it was almost in dog whistle range.

            “Okay,” Sam said. He threw everything into the duffle and dragged the strap over his shoulder.

            “That’s it?” Jensen said.

            Sam shrugged. “That’s it.”

            “I never saw the ghost.”

            Sam started walking back towards the Impala. “A lot of times we don’t.”

            Jensen followed him. Well, it had punched him in the chest. So he’d had a ghostly encounter. He was tired. His hands hurt like a bitch. His back ached. “That blows,” he said.

            “Actually,” Sam said, “that was pretty good, as these things go.”

            Well, yeah. Nobody hurt. “It’s a lot more spectacular on the show,” Jensen said. “I mean, the lighting is better.” He was hoping to get something out of Sam.

            Sam just shrugged.

#

            When you’ve spent several hours digging a grave, any motel is fine. Sam let him have first shower. His hands were a bloody mess. He slept most of the day, waking to take ibuprofen and fall back asleep.

            The next morning they headed back to the Bunker.

            Truly, the shittiest, most boring job ever.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He turned around and Castiel was about a foot away from him. He yelped.
> 
> Castiel was not Misha Collins.
> 
> It wasn’t that Misha didn’t look like Castiel. He did. It’s that Castiel was just… not human. “Hello Jensen,” Castiel said and even though his voice sounded like Misha playing Castiel, it didn’t. His eyes were blue in a way that didn’t seem possible, even if they were originally Jimmy Novak’s eyes.
> 
> “Hello,” Jensen said. “Um, I’m pleased to meet you.”

 

            The Bunker, on the other hand was, to coin a phrase, awesome.

            For Jensen, the Bunker was a soundstage. The hallway was blind, didn’t lead anywhere, and got reconfigured as was needed. The bedroom was Dean’s when the script called for a scene in Dean’s bedroom and then was re-dressed to be Sam’s when the script called for a scene in Sam’s. From the outside, the soundstage looked like a kind of low warehouse with a bunch of trucks and trailers parked around it.

            The real Bunker had a kind of smell. Nowhere in the scripts had it said that the Bunker had a kind of smell. It was sort of like a library and sort of like a church. Sam walked in and yelled, “CAS!” He went down the stairs looking more like Jared than he had at any other time, either because being back in the Bunker relaxed him a little or just because he tended to skip steps, like Jared.

            Jensen followed.

            It looked like the set only real. Things that were plastic on the set were mica or glass or steel. The books were real books.

            “There’s beer in the kitchen,” Sam said. “Although that’s probably true from the show. CAS?” He walked on down the hallway towards the bedrooms.

            The place FELT big.

            A beer seemed like a good idea. He got one and looked at the stuff in the kitchen. Angels apparently left dishes in the sink.

            He turned around and Castiel was about a foot away from him. He yelped.

            Castiel was not Misha Collins.

            It wasn’t that Misha didn’t look like Castiel. He did. It’s that Castiel was just… not human. “Hello Jensen,” Castiel said and even though his voice sounded like Misha playing Castiel, it didn’t. His eyes were blue in a way that didn’t seem possible, even if they were originally Jimmy Novak’s eyes.

            “Hello,” Jensen said. “Um, I’m pleased to meet you.”

            Sam yelled for Castiel from some distant place in the Bunker.

            Castiel turned and called, “I’m in the kitchen with Jensen!” Then turned back and regarded Jensen. Did the dude blink? Sometimes Misha did the not-blinking thing when he was playing Cas. It did give him a kind of uncanny aura. But he had nothing on the real guy. Not that any human could have.

            Jensen didn’t know what to say or do so he just stood there while the angel looked at him.

            What had possessed Dean Winchester to start calling the angel ‘Cas’ like he was a frat brother or something? It was like calling a supernova a flashlight. Dean _was_ a badass motherfucker.

            “Hey, personal space,” Sam said.

            Castiel took a step back and Jensen realized he had been holding his breath.

            “He says Chuck Shurley is God,” Sam said.

            Castiel tilted his head. It should have been kind of charming but it just seemed alien. Jensen thought, ‘he’s going to smite me.’

            “I told him Chuck was a prophet. He says that Chuck showed up at the play where Calliope was killing people,” Sam said. “After we left. So if Chuck was a prophet and is still alive, how could Kevin be a prophet?”

            Castiel didn’t change expression but he looked at Sam. “Perhaps my Father was using Chuck?”

            “Their show says Chuck is God.”

            Castiel dropped his gaze, thoughtful. “Is their show revelation?”

            “It might be,” Sam said. “It gets a lot of things right. He only told me about things from around the time dad died and you pulled Dean out of Hell, but everything he told me was dead on. He knows things that nobody knows.”

            “Do you know where God is now?” Castiel asked.

            Jensen shook his head, nervous. “No. The show doesn’t say much about him. I know you,” he looked at Sam, “thought you were receiving visions from him but they turned out to be from Lucifer.” Sam’s face went blank. He didn’t mean that to have the effect it did on the guy. “I mean,” Jensen said, “It’s not like you were wrong to think that.” He wanted to say more, do more, but if Sam had ever been completely unlike Jared, it was now. Jensen couldn’t have said if he was angry or gutted.

            Sam looked at Castiel. “You see what I mean,” he said tightly.

            “I do,” Castiel said. He, too, was looking at Sam and his face looked more human. “What does He want?” Castiel asked Jensen.

            Jensen shrugged. “Other than telling Marie that the show was not bad? The last time he was on the show was when,” he looked at Sam but couldn’t think of any other way to say it, “when you beat Lucifer and you know—”

            “Jumped,” Sam said, expressionless.

            “Yeah,” Jensen said. “He was typing the story and he was surprised that it wasn’t going the way it was expected to go. He said it was a test and you chose family, you know, you guys. He seemed proud of that.”

            Castiel and Sam both considered that.

            “He said the Impala may be the most important object in the universe.”

            Sam quirked a tiny hint of a smile. “Don’t tell Dean.”

            “Did Castiel…” It was a stupid question. Jensen realized he was having a Dean moment. Dean Winchester had the chops to have a Dean moment. Jensen Ackles had his own kind of moments but they did not involve seraphim.

            Castiel said, “Yes?”

            Jensen took a breath. “Did you honestly yell, ‘Hey assbutt’ and throw a holy oil Molotov cocktail at Michael?”

            Sam looked at Castiel.

            “I did shout ‘assbutt’,” Castiel said. He said ‘assbutt’ in an absurdly clinical way. Jensen had to look away which meant he looked at Sam.

Sam swallowed. He looked kind of distressed but it was also an expression Jared got when he was trying not to laugh. He looked at Jensen and back at Castiel. Castiel looked mildly perplexed which was odd in a way that Misha could only approximate.

Sam Winchester made a funny noise and then lost it. Laughed so hard he slid down the refrigerator and ended up sitting on the floor. Castiel looked genuinely confused.

Apparently some things were just like the show.

#

            “Who could pull this off?” Sam said. “Could Crowley?”

            Castiel looked thoughtful. “He is powerful but it’s a different kind of power.”

            “There aren’t any archangels around to do it anymore,” Sam said.

            They ignored Jensen, letting him sit with his beer like a kid at the adult table at Thanksgiving.

            “Could it be God?” Sam asked. “I mean, I don’t want to go there, not with my track record.”

            “God has intervened in your life before. He put you and Dean on the airplane.”

            Sam shook his head, “That was just because we were needed, or our bodies were, for the Apocalypse. So if God is behind this, that would mean that there was some divine plan being fulfilled. Maybe God wants Dean gone?”

            “He’s not doing that anymore,” Jensen said. They looked at him. “That was the whole point, right? You guys fucking with fate, Stull, no more divine plans.” He took a pull on his beer. “God doesn’t have a purpose anymore.”

            “Tell that to his sister,” Sam said.

#

            Cas felt that there was some hint of something, not grace, but something, clinging to Jensen. He suspected that whatever this was about rested with Dean and that they would have to wait for Dean to do something in the world where Jensen came from.

            Sam had found something in the Men of Letters files in Aramaic that seemed like it might confirm all of that, something that indicated that these alternate worlds came in configurations and stabilized each other. He had speculated that something was threatening the other world, Jensen’s world, that Dean’s presence would stabilize.

            Jensen found it difficult to think of Dean as a stabilizing influence. Maybe they needed to save the Impala. It was, according to Chuck, the most important object in the universe. Dean was a great mechanic.

            Sam seemed to think it was probably weirder.

            In any event, they just had to wait and hope that Dean did his thing.

#

            “So Jared says, ‘Let’s tweet it’.”

            “The show is pretty popular?” Sam said. They were in the library. Sam was endlessly curious about the show. If there was one thing Jensen knew how to do after all those conventions it was tell stories about the show.

            “And it’s got a rabid fan base. There are shows that have better ratings but nowhere near the fan base,” Jensen explained. “So I call his phone so he has the phone number. We’re, like, standing on our marks, gonna shoot a scene in a couple of minutes. And Robin, she’s like the set mom, she looks up and she says, ‘What are you guys doing?’ and—”

            “Set mom?” Sam asks.

            “Yeah, because you know, they’re always handing us stuff like machetes and golf clubs and when we’re standing around waiting for lighting we get bored so sometimes it’s hard not to kind of start whacking stuff with the machetes.”

            “But they’re fake,” Sam said.

            “There’s different types,” Jensen said. “Most of them don’t have a sharp edge but sometimes they’re metal because it would be too obvious that they were rubber in the scene. Robin has one of those mom voices. Like Jody maybe?” Sam did that quick smile thing acknowledging Jody’s ‘mom voice’. “She’ll go JARED!” Jensen said, mimicking Robin, “And he’s like a fucking seven year old caught sipping dad’s beer.”

            Sam shook his head. “You sound exactly like Dean right now.” He shook his head and took a drink of whiskey. Sam didn’t sip, he swallowed. And he was the brother who didn’t drink as much.

            Jensen was sticking to beer. “You mostly feel like Jared when he’s ‘Sam’, except more, if that makes any sense. It’s hard not to feel like I know you.”

            “It’s weird that you know shit I don’t. What else you know?”

            Jensen thought for a bit. “The voicemail,” he said.

            Sam looked curious.

            “It’s emotional crap,” Jensen said, “About your personal life. I feel weird about saying it but I think you’ll be glad to know it, if it’s true here, too.”

            Sam shrugged. “Okay.”

            “This happened years ago in the show, when the angels were really dicking with you and Dean. Zachariah is still playing angel corporate politics.”

            Sam nodded. The light was across half his face. There should have been someone adjusting the light so it was more flattering because he was looking like Sam. This was the library. There should be lights everywhere but it was really rather dim and quiet except for the faint sound of the ventilation system.

            “You and Dean are being played and Dean sends you a voicemail telling you he’s still pissed but he shouldn’t have said what he said. That you’re still brothers and that’s what matters. He actually says the words ‘I’m sorry’.”

            Sam’s eyes narrowed. “When was this?”

            “Well the thing is,” Jensen rushing ahead, unable to quite answer, “Zachariah fucked with the message so that wasn’t what you heard. We did the lines for the message wild, I mean, in a recording booth instead of on set and I had to do them a bunch of times. You know, for the show I had to say both sets of lines. Anyway, the message that Sam on the show heard was Dean calling him a bloodsucking freak and saying that their Dad always said he’d either have to save him or kill him and he was done trying to save him. Then he called him a monster. But Dean never really said that. Dean said he was sorry for telling Sam if he walked out not to come back. It was at the convent. With Lillith and, you know.” Jensen couldn’t quite say _Lucifer rising_ because it was too big. ‘Lucifer’ was Mark Pelligrino, a guy cursed with bone structure that would mostly get him stuck with roles as a serial killer or a bad cop or something.

            Sam sat. It was like when Jared played Sam, things happened along his jawline.

            “Did that really happen?” Jensen asked.

            Sam nodded, still not looking. “Yeah,” he said thickly and had to clear his throat. “Yeah,” he said more clearly. “It did.”

            “Well, Dean never said that.”

            The silence got awkward. Another way Sam wasn’t like Jared. Jared went out of his way to make people feel comfortable, to fill silences. Sometimes annoyingly so. He and Jared had talked about how Dean was charming and Sam was empathetic but how over the years Sam had shut down more and more and Dean had gotten angrier.

            For awhile after the phone message, Jared had played Sam with the assumption that Sam was waiting for something in Dean to snap; for Dean to decide that now was the time to kill him. The writers had planted this thing where Lucifer said that if Sam tried to kill himself that Lucifer would bring him back. They hadn’t been sure if the line was a throwaway or if it was foreshadowing something—not Sam trying to off himself. Not only was it out of character but the network suits would have lost their tiny minds. Suicide was a topic they never wanted to touch. Jensen didn’t know, looking at the real guy, what was true and what wasn’t. Maybe it wasn’t completely out of character. Jared had been suicidal along about season three (although all Jensen had known was that Jay was having a tough time) and still had problems with anxiety. He didn’t like to talk about it, not really, but in some ways he was Sam. Maybe. Did that mean Sam had really thought Dean was going to shoot him or something?

            For the first time, Jensen realized he was looking at someone who had been dead. Really, honestly dead. Dead and alive again.

            Dead on that dirty mattress near Stull.

            Sam looked over, “What’s wrong?”

            Jensen shook his head. “Your lives are fucking weird.” Dean, he realized a split second later, would have said ‘nothing’.

            Maybe that was why Sam actually smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “Sometimes I forget.”

            “So. You want to hear about the time Jared stopped the entire train system in Europe?” Jensen said. “I mean, he tells it a lot better than I can but you’re gonna know that nobody would ever mistake you for the giant dork.”

            “Why and how did he stop the entire train system?” Sam asked.

            “How is the story. Why is because he left one of Gen’s suitcases when they were boarding.”

            “Gen is the woman who played Ruby. He stopped the entire train system for her and you’re sure she’s not a demon?”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “How far?” Jensen asked.
> 
> “About five hours if we don’t stop,” Sam said.
> 
> Relief. “Are we going to stop?”
> 
> Sam looked at him. “Yeah. I’d like some breakfast and there’s a decent place in Salina. Dean hates it but you might like it. Ad Astra Coffee and Books. They have breakfast burritos.”
> 
> “Fine by me,” Jensen said. “Where are we going?”
> 
> “Blackwater Township, Missouri. Vamp.”
> 
> Oh.

*   *    *

            Sam did not put him in Dean’s room which was good. It would have been too weird. But also a little disappointing. He did get a chance to glance in as they passed and the glimpse he got, lit only from the hall, suggested it looked pretty much like it did on the show. Including the guns on the walls.

            Sam made up a bed in another room. It was mostly empty but there was a coffee mug and a modern digital alarm clock. When Sam left, he checked in the closet but it didn’t have anything drawn or painted on the walls so he was pretty sure it had never been Kevin’s room. Maybe Charlie had used it. There was a robe and slippers hanging in the closet and a couple of towels.

            When he got up the next morning it didn’t feel like morning. Without windows there was no sense of the passage of time. This was the best home the Winchesters had ever had. He thought of his home in Austin and his homesickness was almost a physical thing—Danneel, God he craved her like a drug. Sometimes he thought of the time he spent in Vancouver as a kind of sentence, a period he served to insure their security. It was hard to get on the plane and fly to Vancouver and hard to be there but not as hard as this, wondering if he’d ever see them again.

            He prayed that Dean Winchester wasn’t with Danneel and JJ. (If prayed was the right word. Praying to Chuck Shurley was even weirder when it was Rob Benedict, a really nice guy who had a _stroke_ at a con a year ago.) Dean Winchester would protect his wife and daughter, he knew that. He’d put his own body between any harm and them but when it came right down to it if Dean had to chose between a whole world and Sam, Dean would let a whole world burn. If anybody in his world knew how Dean ticked it was him (and Jeremy Carver) and if anybody in his world understood the best of Dean it was him. Dean was separated from Sam and Castiel. John Winchester had taught Dean to keep his eyes on the prize. It was the only way that Dean had stayed functional, by finding a fixed point and sticking to it. When Jensen was being Dean, he clung to it. But now, oh God it terrified him.

            Eyes on the prize. Prize was getting back home. Jensen had no clue had to do that so he had to trust…Sam Winchester. Years of playing Dean Winchester made that a little hard.

            Sam was sitting at his laptop in the kitchen. It felt like a Supernatural cliché. “Sleep okay?” Sam said.

            “Yeah,” Jensen said. “Better than black out curtains.”

            “I made a second pot of coffee,” Sam said. Jensen got himself a cup and sat down.

            Of course. Sam and Dean slept four hours a night. Maybe six. How the fuck did anybody really do that? “Do you really sleep four hours a night?” he asked. Fuck, blame it on the lack of caffeine.

            Sam squinted at him. After a moment he said carefully, “Are you asking me for the show?”

            “Yeah,” Jensen lied.

            Sam shrugged. “I, ah, don’t sleep great. But every couple of weeks I kinda crash and sleep like the dead for about twelve or fourteen hours. And I nap in the Impala.”

            “Dean?”

            Sam made a kind a amused laugh. “Four hours. Until he gets hurt. Then he sleeps twelve, eighteen, sometimes longer. He’s slept thirty-six hours because of a concussion.” Sam looked at him, shrugged. “I think the alcohol fucks up his sleep but hey, you pick your battles, you know?”

            Jensen thought just a split second and then he leaned back, let his knees go just a little wider and smirked slightly, letting just a bit more gravel into his voice. “Sammy, some people cope with shrinks and meds. Me, I like alcohol, denial, and random acts of violence.” He shrugged.

            Sam’s jaw actually dropped.

            Jensen thought maybe he’d gone too far. He collected himself and took a sip from his cup of coffee.

            Sam shook his head. “Holy shit,” he breathed. He looked..gutted.

            “Sorry,” Jensen said. “I didn’t—”

            Sam’s cell phone buzzed and he snatched it up and walked into the library.

            Jensen watched Sam Winchester pace the library, listening and talking on the cell phone. Did this happen to other actors? Did the guys on _Vampire Diaries_ or _True Blood_ have this happen to them? He was pretty sure nobody ever found themselves in the world of fucking _Days of Their Lives_. If he closed his eyes, all he could think of was his baby girl. JJ. And Danneel. Danneel who built a firewall between their public and private lives. Who said ‘this much, these pictures, no further.’ Who said, ‘our life is ours, not theirs, Jensen.’ What was she gonna think when he tried to explain this?

            Maybe he shouldn’t?

            He didn’t keep secrets from Danneel. But how did he explain, _Supernatural is real and I’m channeling Dean Winchester?_ How was that the right thing to tell her? On the other hand, if Dean Winchester was at their house, maybe she already knew.

            Sam came back. “I’ve got to go,” he said.

            “A case?” Jensen asked.

            “Yeah.”

            “Maybe I should go with you.”

            Sam shook his head. “You don’t have any training. I mean, you know, you could learn and all, I’m not—”

            Jensen held his hands up. “I’m not Dean,” he agreed. “I don’t want to fight monsters. But I should be with you in case Dean figures out whatever is going on and the switch happens, right?”

            Sam nodded. “Okay. Right.”

#

            It was very early in the morning. Jensen had always loved the various Impalas they used on set. He had an agreement to buy the most functional—the one he thought of as the real Baby—when the series ended. Right now he looked at the _really real_ Baby and thought if he had to spend another twelve hours in her he’d shoot himself. He was 6’1” and while she was roomy, no car is fun for the number of hours Sam seemed willing to drive.

            “How far?” he asked.

            “About five hours if we don’t stop,” Sam said.

            Relief. “Are we going to stop?”

            Sam looked at him. “Yeah. I’d like some breakfast and there’s a decent place in Salina. Dean hates it but you might like it. Ad Astra Coffee and Books. They have breakfast burritos.”

            “Fine by me,” Jensen said. “Where are we going?”

            “Blackwater Township, Missouri. Vamp.”

            Oh.

#

            Sam asked what kind of music he liked and he said he liked a whole lot of stuff. Rock mostly. Feel free to play anything.

            Sam played a Tom Waits album, the singer/songwriter’s gravelly voice keeping them company most of the first hour. The second choice was Chris Isaacs and that wet surfy guitar. It wasn’t music that Jensen associated with the Impala at all. Sam handed him the iPod and made him scroll through after that.

            Foo Fighters, New Pornographers, NWA, Dr. Dre, Kronos Quartet, Penguin Café Orchestra, Coltrane, Miles Davis. “Green Day?” he said.

            Sam grinned without taking his eyes off the road. “My favorite band when I was, like, twelve. I asked Dean what ‘masturbation’ meant.”

            Jensen laughed. The lyrics to “Longview” rose in his mind, _My mother says to get a job/But she don't like the one she's got/When masturbation's lost its fun/You're fucking lonely_. “What did he say?”

            “Ask dad.”

            “Holy shit, did you?”

            “Do I look stupid?” Sam asked.

            Jensen put on Foo Fighters. That was what was playing when they got to the bookstore/coffee shop/breakfast burrito place. Yeah, Dean would hate it. Indie bookstore full of hipsters. Lattes and cappuccinos and Americanos and brews of the day.

            Sam bought them coffee and breakfast and then wandered the stacks while Jensen held down the table, waiting for their food. Drinking coffee, watching Sam look at books (when he did that he did look like Jared) and talking about what Dean liked and didn’t like felt way too normal. This kind of place was Jensen’s life, not the Winchester’s. It did not feel at the moment like he was on his way to someplace where Sam Winchester would behead a vampire. It felt like he could call his manager and say, “The weirdest fucking thing happened to me…”

            Then they were back on the road and _Dookie_ by Green Day was playing and Jensen was having flashbacks to high school.

#

            Missouri was humid as hell. Maybe not the best description, since Jensen had never personally been to hell and was now with someone who had been. They spent the last part of the drive kicking around theories about Amara.

            “Yeah,” Sam agreed, “I do think Lucifer is the key.” Jensen had just admitted he didn’t think Lucifer would be back if he wasn’t important. He hadn’t really wanted to bring Lucifer up, not to Sam, not after Sam had recently spent time with the mofo but Sam handled it like he handled everything else, like they were talking about Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. “He’s got to be key.”

            “Yeah? What’s your thinking.”

            “Lucifer. From _lux ferre_ , literally ‘light bringer’. She’s the darkness and he’s God’s first, God’s favorite, the light bringer. I think he was God’s weapon against her.” Sam drove one-handed, just like Jared did while playing him, all lose and easy like they weren’t discussing the thing that had tortured him and driven him insane.

            “Have you talked to Dean about it?”

            There was just a bit too long a pause. “Not yet.” Sam knew it was too long a pause. “It’s just a theory. When I’ve got something for real I’ll talk to Dean.”

            Should he say something, Jensen wondered. About whatever was going on? Nothing good came of getting between Sam and Dean. But even bringing it up meant that Sam was done talking and Jensen could feel Sam getting defensive. He was getting better at reading him or maybe he was just better at knowing context.

            Lucifer was context.

            What had the Cage even been like? Not that he was ever going to ask.

They checked into a Roadway Inn in Sweet Springs at two in the afternoon. It had two queen beds with shiny flowery bed spreads and an air conditioner that sounded like a jet engine. Sam sat and flipped open his laptop.

            “Do they have wifi?” Jensen asked.

            Without looking up Sam said, “My laptop’s tethered to my phone.”

            Whatever that meant. Jensen plopped down on the bed and gazed at the television.

            After a few minutes Sam said, “You can turn on the TV. It won’t bother me.” He tossed some dollar bills on the foot of the bed. “Get a Coke if you want.” He didn’t even glance away from the screen.

            “You want something?”

            “If you’re getting one for yourself.”

            “I’m not Dean,” Jensen said. “I get shit for Jared all the time.”

            Sam looked over at that. He had his head slightly down in that way that emphasized the slight tilt of his eyes. There was an moment, and then he said, “Yeah, thanks. A Coke. Or Pepsi. Whatever the machine is.”

            Jensen brought back a couple of Cokes and a couple of candy bars. He tossed one on the desk next to Sam. Sam kept his eyes on the laptop.

            “Dean gets stuff for me,” Sam said quietly.

            Yeah, Jensen thought. When you’re hurt or he’s feeling guilty. Unless he’s pissed off or has the Mark or has some internalized anger he can’t deal with and lashes out at you instead. But God forbid anyone criticize Saint Dean. He flopped down on the bed and turned on the TV and ignored Sam. He found ESPN and then a baseball game. After awhile he heard the Twix being unwrapped. Sam picked up his cell. “Hey Cas. We’re in Missouri. Found anything more about, you know, alternate universes?”

            It was like living with a skittish cat.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was still an hour until sunset when they parked the Impala and walked a block down a hot, maple-lined street to a rather dumpy looking two story apartment complex. Spilling out a window, Rihanna was singing that she was four five seconds from wildin. There was a Minions big wheel by a door and the cars were all either beaters or flashy. This was the land of Pay Day loans and fast food for dinner every night because both parents worked.
> 
> This was the way the man next to him grew up.
> 
> “On the show, vamps always live in abandoned Victorians or skanky warehouses,” Jensen said quietly.
> 
> Sam raised an eyebrow. “They think vamps don’t like running water and electricity?”
> 
> Jensen grinned, “They think this doesn’t make pretty television.”

WARNING:  Rather graphic violence.

*    *    *

            “Vamps are nocturnal,” Sam said. “You probably know that.”

            Jensen watched him pack machetes and load silver bullets into a cartridge. “Yeah,” Jensen said. “You behead them.”

            Sam nodded. “A lot of hunters like to go in during the day. But we’ve found that just before dusk is really good. They’re kind of in between, you know? Like getting someone at four in the morning.”

            “Okay,” Jensen said. “What do you want me to do?”

            Sam looked surprised. “Stay here. Look, nothing personal but you…I’ve never worked with you.” Jensen was pretty sure he going to say something like ‘you’re a civilian’ or ‘you’re not a hunter’ or ‘you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re just an actor’ and had changed it to be more polite.

            “Don’t you need some kind of back up?” Jensen didn’t even know why he was saying this. He didn’t want to go. He hadn’t like the whole cemetery ghost thing.

            “It’s okay,” Sam said. “I’ve got it covered.”

            “You guys don’t hunt vamps alone, right?” He didn’t know how long it was going to take Dean to do his cross-universe thing but as someone who knew Dean he felt a certain responsibility towards the guy and he felt like he shouldn’t leave Sam to die on his watch.

            Sam shrugged. “Not usually. But I have.”

            Jensen narrowed his eyes, channeled a bit of Dean. “After Broward County? While you were Soulless?” Sam’s face went still and his jaw clenched. “Forget the fact you’re just physically older now,” Jensen pressed. “You also aren’t in that mindset. You can do everything and I’ll just wait unless you yell. If things go south I’ll at least be one more machete.”

            Sam shook his head but not in a way that was saying no, more like he couldn’t believe it. “Are you doing that on purpose?”

            “What?”

            “Sounding like him?”

            “A little. Does it work?” Jensen asked.

            Sam did that funny little flicker of a smile/grimace that Jared only did as Sam. “Yeah, it does.” His gaze hardened. “Don’t do it again.”

            Sam was suddenly very big. Armed.

           “Gotcha,” Jensen said.

#

            It was still an hour until sunset when they parked the Impala and walked a block down a hot, maple-lined street to a rather dumpy looking two story apartment complex. Spilling out a window, Rihanna was singing that she was _four five seconds from wildin._ There was a Minions big wheel by a door and the cars were all either beaters or flashy. This was the land of Pay Day loans and fast food for dinner every night because both parents worked.

            This was the way the man next to him grew up.

            “On the show, vamps always live in abandoned Victorians or skanky warehouses,” Jensen said quietly.

            Sam raised an eyebrow. “They think vamps don’t like running water and electricity?”

            Jensen grinned, “They think this doesn’t make pretty television.”

            It was hot to be wearing a jacket but it hid the .45 he was carrying. Dean’s 45 loaded with silver. It felt very comfortable in his hand. Jensen’s family hunted. He’d had spent time on a shooting range, at first just so he would look comfortable shooting a hand gun or a shotgun, later because it was fun. He’d shot a deer. He was from Texas. He could do this.

            As they climbed the stairs a door opened and a young woman came out, hair impeccable, long nails with little diamond things on them. She stared at them. Sam smiled and nodded. Jensen felt incredibly white. They were probably the only white people in the complex except for two of the three vampires. She let them pass and then went down the steps.

            Sam stopped in front of the apartment they wanted and waited until they heard a car start. He pulled latex gloves out of the duffle and handed them to Jensen. Put a pair on himself. That was something he and Jared bitched about on the show, that Sam and Dean never worried about fingerprints. Then Sam put down his duffle bag, knelt and flicked out a lock pick and started on the door.

            It took forever. (Less than a minute.)

            Sam motioned to stay. Then eased the door open and drew his machete. The big man was so light and quiet on his feet. Jensen ignored the stay and Sam frowned when he followed him in until Jensen closed the door behind him, planted his feet and drew his gun in a way that said, ‘I’m staying here right inside the door.’

            Sam nodded. Made sense. It also gave Jensen a chance to let his eyes adjust to the dimness.

            It smelled like a bedroom, like people sleeping. Someone was asleep on the couch. They stirred and Sam was on them. It was the white woman. Sam hauled her up by her hair so she was sitting up and clapped a hand across her mouth. Jensen expected him to behead her with a swipe. The machetes were sharp. Sam stepped to the side of her with the ease of long practice and to Jensen’s surprise, swung the machete at her neck from the front so it cut through her windpipe and her jugular. Blood sprayed out in front of her and her legs and arms splayed out and thumped loudly.   The machete hadn’t gone all the way through. Sam had to wrench it out. Apparently beheading people was harder than it was on television. Sam cracked her head back, (the noise made Jensen sick) and dropped her, heading for the bedroom. Her body was still making a weird burbling noise through her severed windpipe. Air escaping her lungs?

            A man staggered out of the bedroom, clearly half asleep and Jensen saw his nostrils flare and his fangs descend. The part of him that wasn’t thinking about the fact that he had just seen Sam nearly decapitate a woman thought they got the fangs pretty right on the show.

            Sam swung the machete again and the man brought his hand up. Sam’s swing took off part of his fingers (Sam was swinging hard and he was strong) and again, lodged in the guy’s neck. The guy grabbed at the machete, again, blood going everywhere. Sam tried to pull it out but the guy was sort of grabbing it and going down.

            That’s when the third guy came barreling out of the bedroom and picked Sam up and threw him over the counter into the kitchen. The vampire, his fangs fully extended, moved so fast that he was on top of the counter in the blink of an eye.

            They did stunts all the time but that was no stunt and Jensen wasn’t even sure Sam was conscious. Stunts hurt. That had to hurt a lot.

            The vampire was poised on feet and knuckles on the counter. He was pale, with dark hair and since he was wearing only boxers and a t-shirt, it was possible to see whipcord muscle in his arms and legs. He was looking down at Sam, fangs extended.

            Jensen dropped his voice to the gravelly range of Dean because being Dean seemed like the only way to get through this. “Hey! Fugly!” As the thing whipped its head around, he fired. He kept firing silver into it and could see the impact but that only slowed it down as it came at him. It knocked him against the door and it didn’t make any speeches about killing its nest mates or any other crap it just tried to bite him.

            He pushed away with everything he had, trying to get a foot up between him and it. _WhatwouldDeando?WhatwouldDeando?WhatwouldDeando?_ Vampires had surprisingly human morning breath and he turned his face away which wa honestly stupid but he couldn’t really think. The thing was so strong. He was yelling, “AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

            Then the weight was off him and Sam was there, hacking at the thing’s neck with the machete. There was more blood spraying everywhere. He watched, blinking and feeling stupid, as Sam hacked the thing’s head off. Then Sam knelt and grabbed his face, looked in his eyes and ran his fingers down his neck.

            “Did you get any in your mouth!” Sam said.

            “What?”

            “BLOOD! DID YOU GET ANY IN YOUR MOUTH!” Sam said. Right, he could be turned. Sam’s hands were gentle, looking for injuries, although Sam himself had a cut on his forehead that was bleeding like a mother.

            “No!” Jensen said.

            “Okay,” Sam said. “People will have heard shots. We’ve gotta go.” He grabbed the head he hacked off. “See if you can find a trash bag in the kitchen.”

            Jensen levered himself off the floor and got to his feet. There was blood on the kitchen floor—Sam’s he assumed. He found trash bags under the sink and brought the box to Sam. Sam had finished beheading the woman on the couch and was hacking the head off the last guy, the one in the bedroom door.

            “Put the heads in a bag,” Sam said. Like that was a normal request. Jensen grabbed the woman’s head by the hair. It was heavy. He dumped it in the bag. Then the guy who’d come after him. Sam had grabbed the body of the man he’d just finished with and was dragging it into the bathroom and throwing it in the tub. He did the same with the other two bodies. “I hate doing it this way,” he said. He reached up and casually disabled the smoke alarm.

            He salted the bodies in the tub and poured acetone on them. He flicked a match and dropped it, waited until they had caught.

            “Cops are probably already on their way. Bodies probably won’t get burned but it’s the best we can do. As long as we burn the heads we’ll be all right.”

            It was still light outside and they were covered in blood. Sam led them around the back of the apartment complex and through the backs of buildings to the Impala. Jensen carried the duffle. The garbage bag of heads bounced against Sam’s leg as they jogged.

            Then they were in the Impala.

            Sam drove like nothing had happened. “Thanks for the back up,” he said. “You were great. Kept your cool. Did everything right.”

            Jensen nodded.

            Sam glanced over at him.

            “You need me to pull over?” Sam asked.

            “I don’t know,” Jensen said.

            “Tell me if you do,” Sam said. “No shame.”

            “Not ashamed,” Jensen said.

            He didn’t throw up.

            They were checked in through the morning but Sam had them shower and pack and got them on the road. Jensen felt light-headed every time he stood up. He couldn’t get the image of Sam Winchester hacking some guy’s head off out of his head. The machete rising and falling. The sound. Sam’s shoulder working, and his hair moving with the rhythm of his exertion.

            They stopped just outside Kansas City, picked up a twelve pack at a gas station and checked into a little motel. Sam parked the Impala in back. Jensen couldn’t get used to the idea that people wouldn’t see the Impala and stop. The Impala was always a magnet for attention. Him and Jared in the Impala was impossible to miss, a freaking shit show of people taking photos with their phones and now the police were looking for them. He kept trying to remind himself that in this world no one knew about the Impala, there was no television show.

            There was a field out behind them, flat in the darkness, and beyond that the far off sound of the freeway. Sam picked up the garbage bag with the heads and said, “I’ll be back.”

            Jensen knew he should go with him but he didn’t have it in him. He’d had his quota of weirdness. He sat in the doorway drinking a beer and watched Sam Winchester burn three vampire heads in a field in Missouri and wondered, as he sometimes did, what his life had come to. Usually when he wondered that it was because he was in an airport checking in to fly home from Vancouver and strangers were taking his picture. Or he was at a convention where someone had paid some stupid amount of money to have their picture taken with him and he was reminding himself that this was JJ’s college fund and future, that Danneel had given up those crucial years of a woman’s acting career to be home with there daughter and this way she’d never have to worry if he was typecast as Dean Winchester and never got another decent acting gig in his life.

            He and Jay both swore that no one could ever have survived what the Winchesters went through and yet there the guy was. How crazy were they? They’d destroy everything for each other. They were in constant, constant pain.

Eventually he walked out into the field where Sam crouched, watching the fire. Don’t leave a fire unattended until you’re sure it’s completely dead. “Do you want me to order a pizza or something?” Jensen asked.

            “Yeah,” Sam said. “Good call. Pizza or Chinese.”

            The fire was mostly ash and chunks of what were probably bone but were mostly unidentifiable. “Why acetone?”

            “Best easily available accelerant,” Sam said. “We’ve used almost everything. Lighter fluid’s good. Gas and kerosene not so much.”

            Jensen pulled out Dean’s phone and checked what was around, ordered from some place called The Golden Lion.

            “You’ll be okay,” Sam said.

            Jensen looked up at the sky an thought of angels. “Not if I stay here,” he said.

            Sam straightened up and looked up, too. He didn’t say ‘you won’t stay here.’ He also didn’t say, ‘you’re no substitute for my brother.’ Because Sam wasn’t like that.

            “You’re not okay,” Jensen said quietly. “Dean’s not okay.”

            Sam didn’t say anything.

            “Look, I’m not a psychologist, but Jared went through some shit and he started a campaign to bring more awareness to issues about suicide and anxiety. You learn a lot about that stuff. Doesn’t take a genius to see you’re throwing yourself at death, dude.”

            “Jared is suicidal?” Sam asked.

            “Not now. I mean, he still has anxiety and sometimes I think, yeah, but it’s hard to tell because he has kind of a mask. You know. ‘Everything’s fine’.”

            “How about you?” Sam asked. It was hard to see his face in the dark, what little light the embers of the fire gave weren’t much help, but his tone was kind, earnest. Listening. Completely focused.

            Fuck. Interviewing the witness.

            “Not about me. I go home and I can talk to a thousand therapists. I can hide what happened today under saying that the show made me think about Rwanda or something.” Assuming he got home. “You’ve got what? A psychotic, erotic, codependent relationship with Dean.”

            He could feel the frown and confusion in the dark.

            “Zachariah said that on the show.”

            Sam laughed quietly.

            “I’m the guy in the seat next to you in the airplane, dude. The one you talk to and never see again. Except I know the stuff is real.”

            “I appreciate the offer,” Sam said. “I’m doing okay right now. Except for, you know, having Dean in an alternate universe.”

            Jensen’d had a long day and he knew he was being bullshitted. He thought about giving up and going back to the room. Sam and Dean were probably doomed anyway. Being here, feeling the forces arrayed against them, what the hell did he think he could do anyway? On the other hand, he was feeling pissed. “So, has Dean ever so much as said anything more than ‘you all right?’ about making a deal with Death behind your back and nearly taking your head off with Death’s scythe? You worked out those issues?”

            “That is none of your fucking business,” Sam growled. Jensen had the pleasure of knowing he’d gotten through the mask.

            “The show is winding down, Sam. I don’t know how things are going to end. But you gotta think about the end game. You gotta think about getting out of all this.”

            Sam gave him a long unreadable look and then said, “I’ve been trying to get out of this my whole life, one way or another.”

            Jensen thought Sam _didn’t get it_. The show was probably only gonna last another couple of years. “Jared’s the math guy not me, but you don’t have to be a genius to figure out there are only four ways this ends. You both live, he dies, you die, you both die. Don’t you feel it winding down?”

            “There is an end game.  I've made my peace with it.  I've got it,” Sam said. Before Jensen could say anything, Sam's cell phone rang. He answered, “Cas?” It illuminated his face and he looked like Jared playing Sam and Jensen wanted to be home so badly he wanted to double over. “That’s great, dude,” Sam said. “Scan it and send it to my laptop. Do I need ingredients? Great. I’ll call you when we’re ready, you can walk me through the pronunciation.” Sam hung up. “Cas says something is happening. He found something we need to do on this side to match what Dean is doing on the other side. With a little luck, you’re going home.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back when I was craving, you know, white knuckling it, I went to a couple of twelve step meetings to see if that would help," Sam said. “They have this step where you take a ‘fearless moral inventory’ of the things you have done and you take responsibility for them. You try to make amends for the things that you can.”
> 
> Jensen said, “It’s not really your fault that you had demon blood—”
> 
> “Yeah,” Sam said, “I know, I know. It’s not my fault but if I start trying to say I’m this way because of my father and he’s this way because my mother died so I can forgive him but still not forget, well, most people in therapy are not the result of a breeding program. They’re not like prize stallions bred since Cain and Abel to be a weapon.” Sam didn’t say it with any anger. He crouched back down and started the torch again.
> 
> Jensen thought about how hard all that kneeling and crouching had to be on the knees. “I can see how that would be hard to explain to a therapist.”

*    *    * 

           Magic on the show was all about candles and copper bowls, herbs and sigils. Not surprisingly, magic in this world was a little different. The sigil that showed up on Sam’s computer was way more complicated than anything that had ever been on the show. The office had a printer and Sam printed out about five pages, sending Jensen to chat up the clerk (Sam said that he could probably explain away the stuff he was printing but it was just easier.) Jensen was so not the guy to chat people up. Jared chatted people up. Jared asked busboys about their lives. Jared was a walking talking bundle of distracted empathy combined with a desperate need to be liked. Jensen told the guy some bullshit about doing local histories and asked him if his family was from the area.

            The guy’s family was from Florida. Sam looked up from the printer and said, “We’re not going to be in Florida for another eight months. Whereabouts?”

            Jensen got to hear a lot about Pensacola before Sam pulled him out of the office.

            At two in the morning they were out in the parking lot under a flickering parking lot light. Sam was using reddish sidewalk chalk to painstaking copy the very complicated sigil.

            “How do you do that?”

            “Do what?” Sam said, not stopping or looking up.

            “Copy so well?”

            “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” Sam said.

            Practice. Old joke.

            “A sigil like this has layers of simpler ones in it,” Sam said. “I start with the basic circle—” Sam had had him hold the string in the center while he inscribed a circle— “and then I use that and simple ruler and protractor stuff to do the rest. It’s time consuming but not as hard as it looks. Like crop circles.”

            “You make crop circles?”

            “Hoaxers and fairies make crop circles.”

            “And leprechauns,” Jensen said.

            Sam looked up at that and Jensen remembered too late that Sam had been soulless then. “And leprechauns,” Sam agreed and went back to his drawing.

            Jensen must have nodded off because he jerked awake smelling something burning. Sam was going over the chalk lines with a plumber’s torch, burning the sigil. “What’s that?” he said.

            “Plumber’s torch.”

            “No, sorry, why are you doing that?”

            Sam shrugged. “Don’t know. I’m thinking red ocher is earth and fire is, well, fire. It also uses life force which can represent air.”

            “So, blood? Some sort of sacrifice?”

            “No,” Sam said, “the spell just takes it out of me.”

            Jensen frowned. “Isn’t that dangerous?”

            Sam shrugged, “Probably not.”

            Not reassuring. But Jensen wanted to go home. Really bad. Jared hadn’t been written out of the show so it wasn’t likely that Sam would die. (They hadn’t been renewed for next year yet, either. What if Sam was, he didn’t know, trapped in the veil? Screwed up?)

            He was so tired he kept nodding off. Apparently killing was exhausting.

            Sam didn’t seem tired but he had to be. Probably would be nice to talk to him. Like talking to the driver on a long car ride to help them keep awake.

            “Green Day, huh?” Jensen said.

            Sam smiled a little without looking up from his work. “I noticed you recognized all the songs.”

            “Misspent youth,” Jensen said.

            They talked on and off about nothing. Jensen found himself talking about JJ, about how he worried about the time away from her. She ran to him when she saw him, was excited to be around him, but if anything happened, she went to Dani. Of course. He was gone so much. He told himself that it was for the best. He’d probably never get a show like this again. Make hay while the sun shines and all that. But this was such an important age.

            Sam listened. He didn’t say everything would be all right. He didn’t say Jensen was bad. He said things like, “Sounds fucking hard.”

            The conversation drifted some more. Later, he couldn’t remember how it ended up there but he remembered what Sam said because he knew he wanted to tell Jared.

            “I’m a junkie,” Sam said, standing up from his crouch and stretching for a moment. “I mean, you know that.”

            “Do you ever miss it?” It seemed easy to ask in the night.

          “I haven’t touched the stuff in a long time. You know, since before the Cage. That’s a long time to get over the craving.” Sam grinned, teeth white. “And the answer to your next question is, I don’t know.”

            Jensen said, “I wasn’t going to ask anything.

            “Everybody wants to know how long,” Sam said. “Dean says 180 years. Crowley says the deeper you go, the bigger the time difference. But I don’t really know. Time wasn’t the same in the Cage. Angels are multidimensional beings and time isn’t linear for them. Also, no day or night, no eating, no sleeping. Just one long continuous now. But back when I was craving, you know, white knuckling it, I went to a couple of twelve step meetings to see if that would help.

            “They have this step where you take a ‘fearless moral inventory’ of the things you have done and you take responsibility for them. You try to make amends for the things that you can.”

            Jensen said, “It’s not really your fault that you had demon blood—”

            “Yeah,” Sam said, “I know, I know. It’s not my fault but if I start trying to say I’m this way because of my father and he’s this way because my mother died so I can forgive him but still not forget, well, most people in therapy are not the result of a breeding program. They’re not like prize stallions bred since Cain and Abel to be a weapon.” Sam didn’t say it with any anger. He crouched back down and started the torch again.

            Jensen thought about how hard all that kneeling and crouching had to be on the knees. “I can see how that would be hard to explain to a therapist.”

            “But my choices being my responsibility,” Sam said. “That makes sense to me. I let the Darkness loose.”

            “Dean took the Mark.”

            “His choice. His responsibility,” Sam said. “He feels that the Darkness is our problem and I’m grateful, but honestly, I broke it, I fix it.”

            “You’ll let other people help you, right?”

            Sam nodded. “Yeah. Didn’t work out so well for Charlie, though.”

#

            Jensen jerked awake again when some service came by to deliver tissues and toilet paper. The guy was in a step van. He parked behind the manager’s office in the very early gray of predawn. He got swung down from the front seat and stood watching for a long minute then walked over.

            Sam looked up. “Hi,” he said.

            “Hi. What are you doing?”

            Sam looked over the intricate drawing, ocher chalk and burned lines under a solitary light. He straightened up and said, “Art. I’m a photographer. Brice Wesson.” He stuck out his hand. “I’m doing a series of photographs across America. It’s called _Signs and Risings_. Got a book of photographs coming out from Silverbridge Press next spring.”

            The guy looked a little caught by surprise. Jensen was too. “Rick Baird,” he said. He looked down at the elaborate sigil. “It’s…kinda cool.”

            Sam nodded. “It’s based on the same kind of thing Pennsylvania Dutch based their hex signs on. You know, those things they stuck on their barns?”

            The guy nodded. He clearly had no idea what Sam was talking about. He studied the sigil. “It’s complicated,” he finally said.

            “Yeah,” Sam said, grinning. “It gives you a sense of meaning, right? Like it’s in a secret language or it’s magic or something.”

            Rick Baird clearly didn’t want to offend the big guy making weird art in a parking lot. “Yeah,” he said. “Why are you doing it at five in the morning?”

            “Jensen and me,” Sam indicated Jensen, “we’re due in Austin and we didn’t expect to spend the night here. I saw this field and it was just right. Here, let me show you some of my others.” Sam pulled out his phone and flicked through the menu as he talked. “The light in the first hour after the sun comes up and the last hour before it goes down has a special quality. Those are called ‘golden hours’. I want to get that field behind us.” He handed the phone to the guy. “Go ahead and scroll through.

            The last hour of sunlight really was called ‘the golden hour’ at least in shooting television or film. Jensen watched Sam seem all intense and artsy and Rick Baird be polite and Midwestern while looking at photos of God knew what.

            “That’s really cool,” Rick said after a minute. “I won’t keep you.”

            “Yeah,” Sam said. “Hope your deliveries go easy.” He watched the guy walk across the parking lot to his truck.

            “What did you show him?” Jensen asked.

            Sam handed him the phone. It was photos of sigils. Small ones. Large ones. One looked as if it must have been 100 feet or more across, intricate and elaborate, every inch filled with something. It was taken from above in what looked like an empty church. At the center was a chair.

            “What’s that?”

            “The third trial,” Sam said. “Took almost four weeks of prep. Partly because I didn’t work that many hours straight. All for nothing.” He squatted back down. “I should be finished in a few more minutes.”

#

            It was actually about half an hour. Then Sam had Jensen sit at a particular point and he stood at an opposite side.

            It felt like sitting in front of a Ouija board. Like being in middle school or something. It felt both like play acting and really frightening.

            A little like acting did sometimes.

            “What do I do?” Jensen asked.

            “Nothing,” Sam said. “You didn’t feel anything when you came here?”

            He shook his head. “I just woke up in the motel room.”

            “Okay,” Sam said. “I don’t know what it will be like to try to transfer you back. Hopefully the same.”

            That sounded ominous. “What could happen?”

            “You want to see your wife and daughter?” Sam asked. Something in Jensen’s face made him smile. “So don’t bother asking.” He reached in his pocked and pulled out his cell phone. “Cas. I sent you a photo of the sigil, how’s it look?”

            Listening with the phone to one ear (like Jared, his hand made the phone look small) he ran his other hand through his hair. It was thoughtful rather than worried. Nice that after years of watching Jared play Sam he felt as if he could read the big guy.

            “Okay, let’s go over some of the pronunciation?”

            Jensen listened with one ear. He was going to sleep for a week. No he was going to hug Dani for a week. No, he was going to hug Dani and JJ for a week. He was going to quit the show. He could never quit the show because wouldn’t that mean something had happened to Dean? He was going to convince them that they had to let the boys ride off into the sunset. No blaze of glory. And they had to do something about the stupid Billy storyline. Let them go to heaven.

            “I’m going to leave the line open,” Sam said. “Okay Jensen, time to beam you out of here.”

            Jensen nodded. He felt like he should close his eyes or something.

            Sam put a piece of paper down at his feet but once he started speaking, he never looked at it again. He did things with his hands, formed a box with his fingers and wrist at right angles, made his fingers bend in unexpected ways. Shifted his hands so they slid across each other, pulled them apart and slid them back together, index fingers pointed up. It was weirdly hypnotic and nothing like anything they had ever done on the show.

            Blue and white static started to dance, St. Elmo’s fire, on his hands and arms.

            As he spoke it danced all over his body and down his legs. It arc’d into the sigil.

            The energy leaped along all the lines, tiny lightning.

            It was so scary. It was coming out of Sam. Jensen smelled whiskey and gun oil. He couldn’t look away.

#

            Jensen woke up and Sam was awake, watching him nervously. Two things struck him, one, Sam usually hid his nervousness and two, he was in a much nicer motel room than he’d gone to sleep in. He sat up fast.

            “Jen?” He knew instantly it wasn’t Sam.

            “Jay?” Jensen asked.

            “Thank fucking God,” Jared said and hugged him.

            “JJ and Danneel?” he asked.

            “They think we’re off being manly men,” Jared said. “That I’m kinda freaked and you’re pretending you need a break so I’ll take one. Gen thinks I’m pretending to need a break so you’ll take one.”

            Jensen exhaled. “Holy shit.”

            “You all right?”

            Jensen thought a moment. “Yeah. What was he like?”

            “Funny. Smart. Scary. Drinks like a fish. He was obsessed with photographs of JJ and Shep and Thomas. He kept using up the charge on your phone because he didn’t sleep much and stared at the photos all night. Where were you?”

            “With Sam.”

            Jared sat back and ran both hands through his hair. “For real? God, it was real? Dude, part of me still thinks you’re having some sort of breakdown.”

            “How’d he convince you?” Jensen asked.

            “Well, he can fix cars and you don’t even refill window washer fluid.” Jared leaned forward. “Show me your hands.”

            Jensen held out his hands. “He had scars?”

            “Yeah,” Jared said. “He had mileage, you know? He wasn’t you. What was Sam like?”

            “Smart. Scary. You do a pretty good job of doing him. We did a salt and burn and took out a vampire nest.”

            Jared’s eyes got big. “You’re shitting me. What was it like?”

            What was it like? “Let’s hope they never make an episode about it. You know how ‘The French Mistake’ was funny? This wasn’t funny.”

            There wasn’t anything funny about it at all. He thought of all the times as Dean when he had taken care of Sammy. He thought of all the times Sammy had needed Dean. He thought of Dean waking up back there. “What do you think they’re doing right now?” he asked.

            Jared looked at him. He swallowed and Jensen watched him put on Sam. “Sam has his hands on Dean,” Jared said, looking at him as if he was seeing Dean. “On his shoulders, on his biceps, maybe on his knees. He’s checking him over, convincing himself it’s really Dean and that Dean’s okay.”

            “Dean’s calming him down, doing the same thing. Then he’ll make a joke.”

            “Then Sam will ask him what happened.”

            Jensen cocked his head, “What happened?”

            Jared shook his head. “Something freaky.”

            “Then they’ll do what we did,” Jensen said, “they’ll talk about us. Not much though because for them it’s like one more day at the office. Then Dean will make fun of Sam and complain about needing coffee.”

            Jared nodded. “Sounds about right.”

            “I need coffee. You need coffee. Let’s get coffee and you can tell me about freaky shit,” Jensen said.

 

_The hotel room is empty after them. A better than average hotel room, white duvets on thick comforters, lots of pillows on the beds, complimentary water. Sunlight spills across the floor and unmade bedding._

_Reality thins. There’s the sound of wind rushing through a car window, of driving, the thrum of a big engine. ‘…and the two boys, Sammy, you_ wouldn’t _believe. Brown eyes like their mom but tilted, like yours. They looked so goddamned happy…’_

_The curtains flutter a moment and the sound dies away. Everything is still again._

 

_Fin_

**Author's Note:**

> The character of 'Jensen Ackles' is loosely based on the actor of the same name. His concerns and attitudes are based on the real concerns and attitudes of actors living and working in the entertainment industry today but I don't know him or speak for him and have no idea what his private life is actually like, much less the lives of his wife and daughter.


End file.
